In most places, for most of history, children’s food has not existed as a separate category after the age of weaning.

The main reason to be suspicious of fruit as a food for children was that it was just so delicious.

We know that letting our children eat too many sweets makes us a bad parent, hence the pointless ritual at Halloween when parents allow their children to go from house to house accumulating a big haul of treats, only to confiscate them at the end of the night, because they don’t want their child to get cavities. Yes despite their anxiety about sweets, parents will happily feed their children highly sweetened sports bars, fruit snacks and cereals which are sweets in all but name.

While the form of ‘kid food’ is more varied than ever, however, the content is far less so. Foods marketed specifically at children tend to be higher than average in salt, sugar and fat.

How can wholesome nursery food compete with hundreds of new and heavily advertised concoctions, calculated to appeal to a child’s sense of novelty?

Have you noticed that when someone wants to express that something tastes extra specially wonderful, they will often invoke childhood?

To give a child the things they love to eat bestows a heroic glow. Seeing a child fed reassures you that you have done your duty as a parent, like a mother bird ferrying worms to the nest.

Much of what we learn about eating comes from the way our parents feed us.

Our childhood experiences with food can trap us in destructive patterns for the rest of our lives.